Carrie Blake: The Woman Before You: An intense, addictive love story with an unexpected twist...

He said, ‘What I mean is, how does a hundred and fifty grand a year sound?’

‘Amazing,’ I said, taken aback. ‘But … why me? You’ve never met me before. You know nothing about me.’

‘I saw you and your friends. You’re the hungriest guy at that table.’

He motioned for his entourage to come back. He told me to give my contact information to a tall, gym-buffed guy in a pale gray suit who typed it, lightning fast, into his phone.

‘My office will contact you,’ Morton said. ‘Have a fun evening.’

I went back to my table.

The guys said, ‘What was that about?’

I said, ‘I was just telling him how much I liked his films.’

My interview with Val Morton was two days away. I spent them on the internet. I read the puff pieces about the good works that the Prairie Foundation was doing, and some shorter pieces, mostly from political sites that weighed the fact that Val Morton was helping to ruin New York City against the fact that he’d built houses in the 9 thward after Hurricane Katrina.

I read about his fights with the Landmarks Commission and other city agencies regarding his plans to turn some of Manhattan’s oldest, most beautiful structures—the counting house off the Battery, a hall at Ellis Island—into condos. It was Val Morton’s position that he would preserve these places, which the cash-strapped city was letting decay.

Of course, I wondered why Val was hiring me. The way he’d said hungry scared me, partly because it was true. What had he meant by stuff ? If the job wasn’t about sex, then what was it? To be his hired goon. To go to meetings and threaten the neighborhood associations. To make it clear that the sweet little old lady who said that her river view was being blocked by Val’s condo would come to wish she’d shut up and let Val do whatever he wanted.

I read the details of how his building on the waterfront in Brooklyn Heights had involved a battle. About how his co-op board was up in arms about Val’s plans to combine two Upper East Side apartments in order to double the size of the prewar Park Avenue palace in which he and Heidi lived. And about the ongoing war over his plans to take over Long Island City.

At the Prairie Foundation office, on the thirty-sixth floor of a high-rise in Tribeca, I had to run through a gauntlet of security guards, receptionists and secretaries before one of them finally gave me a form to fill out. There were several dozen questions, mostly having to do with my education, my health, my background, my previous employment.

It was just the kind of thing that made me conscious of how dismal my resume was. I worked in a fried chicken place! At the end, the form asked if I had a criminal record. I considered lying. Did one mistake I’d made as a teenager mean that I was supposed to spend my whole life asking, ‘Will that be light meat or dark?’ But something about my talk with Val Morton made me think this might be the rare case: a straight job for which a sketchy history would actually count in my favor.

Val didn’t bother seeing me. A secretary said, ‘Oh, Mr Walker, you’re hired.’

‘Matthew,’ I said. ‘Matthew Frazier.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You can start Monday.’

The job was never boring, though I didn’t always know what I was doing or why. I got paid enough to rent a nice one-bedroom apartment near Central Park, where I ran either before or after I went to work. I didn’t ask a lot of questions. I found out the answers later, if I found out at all. Sometimes I felt like a high level, well-paid errand boy. Once I hand-delivered a laptop to a lawyer’s office in Kansas City. It was assumed that I wouldn’t look at what was on it. I was sort of like Val’s personal assistant, though (at least I told myself) the work was a little more challenging and demanding than that. I never understood the black and white rules for being a ‘good guy.’ I liked working for Val because for Val—everything is grey.

I managed Val and Heidi’s apartments in Brooklyn Heights and on the Upper East Side, so he and Heidi could stay wherever was closer to where they were spending the evening. I worked with Val’s decorator, Charisse, to fix up the Brooklyn Heights condo.

Charisse and I trusted each other. When I told her that Val needed a new mattress, even though he already had one, she let me pick it out.

The real explanation was that I had found Isabel, and she was working in the mattress store.

But that was a secret between Val and me. Charisse didn’t have to know that.

One day, not long after I went to work for him, Val Morton called me up to his office. He always sat in front of a vast, explosion-proof picture window so that the Statue of Liberty seemed to float in the air behind him. He always gave everyone a moment to be wowed by the view. Then he got down to business.

‘I need you to do something that you may not understand, at least at first. But it has to be done. There’s something I need. You will need a partner. An accomplice, if you will. A woman. A young woman. Pretty but not too pretty. Sexy but not too sexy. Not ridiculous. A smart girl who isn’t crazy but who will do anything you say. The Bonnie to your Clyde. The Sissy Spacek character to the Charlie Sheen character. Dude, relax. I’m joking. I’m not asking you to rob banks or commit serial murders.’

I looked over his shoulder at a helicopter hovering over the Hudson.

‘Does this involve sex?’

‘Not with me,’ Val said. ‘I don’t even want to watch. I’ve got Heidi. Remember?’

As far as I knew, Val and Heidi were more or less happily married. A few days before, Val had taken me to lunch at Michael’s. He’d ordered the Cobb salad, as always.

He said, ‘I don’t know if you know this, Matthew, but I’ve been married three times. I must believe in the institution. I’ve got four kids, two from each previous marriage. Everybody gets along, loves everyone else. I’d say okay to one more kid, but that’s not on Heidi’s agenda. So at the moment we’re good.’ He knocked lightly on the table and gave me a version of the smile that had made him a movie star.

Now, in his office, Val said, ‘Don’t be an asshole, Matthew. This is not about the porn film of your dreams. Sex with this … accomplice would be your call. Sex, I need hardly point out, is one of the most reliable forms of mind control. Especially useful with young women.’

It was an odd thing for an older guy—my boss—-to say. Was he saying that Heidi was his personal mind control sex slave? I’d assumed their connection was about Morton’s money and power. If power was the greatest aphrodisiac, money and real estate were right up there along with it.

‘That’s not very feminist,’ I said. ‘Very retro.’

‘Mea culpa,’ said Morton ‘Please. Take it easy. This is supposed to be fun. You’re getting paid to seduce a pretty girl of your choice. Thank me. There’s no rush. Let’s give it to the end of the fall. Find the right girl. Get her ready. Maybe hold off on fucking her. Make her wait for it. Make her beg. Keep me posted. Let me know how it’s going. Tell me when she’s ready to do what we need. What I need. Then I’ll tell you what comes next.’

Actually, it was intriguing. What a cool assignment. All I had to do was find a girl who would do anything I said. I could have sex with her if I wanted to, but I didn’t have to. And it would be fun to make her wait. Val was right. I was getting paid for what most guys would pay to do. And somehow, in a funny way, that qualified me to do it. It was a job. Compared to the jobs that were out there, this was beyond sweet. I’d be nice to the girl, court her, tease her a little. She’d never have to be the wiser. And—at least as far as I knew—no one would get hurt.